Coming off its only loss of the season, the No. 11 Boston University women’s field hockey team will look to redeem itself against The College of William and Mary Friday in Williamsburg, Va. Disregarding NCAA rankings, the teams are entering the match fairly equally. They each have five wins and a loss apiece and both lost only recently to a highly ranked opponent. Boston University fell to No. 2 Syracuse, and W&M lost to No. 9 University of Virginia.
Even experience away from home is the same. Both the Tribe and the Terriers have had four matches away and all eight of them were wins on the respective score sheets.
All the equality leaves is something to prove, something to show that one team is better.
“[William and Mary] showed in their game against Virginia — as we did with our game against Syracuse — that they can play with [high-ranking] teams, so they’re going to be a very good opponent for us,” said BU coach Sally Starr.
All past games for the Terriers, with the exception of last Friday’s win over No.17 Boston College, were against unranked teams, so, despite the result on paper, the loss to the Orange yielded only positive results.
The match proved that the Terriers could measure up to this year’s steeper competition, such as the Orange.“I’m very pleased with how the team is responding with their work ethic and their attitude,” Starr said. “What I found this week in practice was a motivated team that wanted to get better and I’m not sure the motivation level would be like this if we had beaten Syracuse.”
In practice, the focus was on mental endurance and technical execution. Coaches drilled the players to the point of exhaustion but forced them to stay attentive and in the moment.
The point was to improve both awareness and quality of play both on and off the ball late in matches when slight mistakes can mean a loss.
More specifically, the forwards were particularly isolated. Their respective training revolved around the key point of their function on the field: scoring. Only six games into the season, William and Mary has outscored Boston University 23–13.
The Terriers have allowed one more goal against than their opposition, but the difference is not enough to avoid specific attention to the drastic difference in offensive conversion.
“[William and Mary’s] game against Virginia last Friday actually told us a lot about them,” Starr said. “They’ve been scoring a lot of goals, but they’ve been scoring a lot of goals against just good teams, not great teams. They lost against Virginia two to nothing, but they still outshot them and out-cornered them.”
Another key point of the upcoming match is unfamiliarity. The last time these two schools played each other in field hockey was over a decade ago which yielded a 1–0 overtime win for the Virginia natives.
However, that is the only time in either teams’ history of that there has been such a result. Since that game, both teams have become entirely different groups with equally changed playing styles.
The out-of-conference games such as those against the Tribe have a much greater impact on the Terriers now as well. Absent of the America East bid into the NCAA playoffs due to next year’s transfer to the Patriot League, BU is now stuck competing against higher-level teams constantly just to have a chance at the postseason.
The evidence lies in as short a time as next week when they take on University of Massachusetts on the Sept. 18, so every game has to be important.
“[William and Mary is] a very well-coached team, a very athletic team,” said Starr. “Overall, they play a good game. It should be an excellent hockey match.”
